Don’t they know what it means to Tea Bag someone?

There is this “movement” going around by rich white guys who hate change and drawing on their peons of bigots, religious zealots, and freaky militia types to protest “high taxes” and “run away” spending by the current administration of President Obama. They will be holding tea parties across the country and asking people to “tea bag” Congress – by sending them a tea bag – to harken back to the Boston Tea Party during the American Revolution. Besides being a silly protest, not to mention the funny of using “tea bagging”, it shows how inept the conservatives are and how they can’t even come up with any new ideas.

Fox News – you know the guys who are looking out for the common man – is hyping the tax protests to take place on April 15th.

Today, in our time, we need to make a similar point in the face of arrogant power. And you can, too, on April 15, when millions of Americans will gather in peaceful protest across the country, protesting against the evils of over-taxation and its wicked handmaidens, over-spending and over-regulation.

If you visit the Web site of Tax Day Tea Party, you will find plenty of information on how and where to get connected to a tea party–or how to start your own tea party.

Plenty of big names will be involved, ranging across the country. Glenn Beck will be in Texas and Newt Gingrich will be in New York City. Sean Hannity will be in Atlanta. Neal Cavuto will be in Sacramento. And many, many more–FOX News and FOX Nation folks will be providing full coverage.

Tea Parties: A Great Part of American History–And America’s Future

Of course it is a silly protest.

It is protesting the rise in taxes of those who make more than $250,000 a year. Under Obama’s plan, that segment is the only one who will see their taxes go up. But don’t let the facts get in the way of the thick heads at Fox and their peon fans.

They still think it is cool to claim that there are high taxes or run away spending but I wonder where they were when Bush demolished a budget surplus he got in 2001 and ran up a huge deficit.

Also the people at Fox and their fans still haven’t offered any evidence that “we” pay too much in taxes or that spending is running away. They just don’t like Obama and his plan. It is a simple protest against a Democrat.

What does this say about conservatives when they lose at the ballot box and they talk about “revolution”, “tea parties”, “taking the country back”, “gun ban”, and on and on and on – instead of figuring out why their message failed to gain them votes in 2008. It is a bit childish to me.

No one has proven that taxes are too high, have never offered any comparison, or why anyone should care.

I also like how people’s brains turn off when they think “tax cuts” will solve the economic crisis we are in when they didn’t help in the first place and may have actually led to the crisis in the first place.

They need to grow up and take some ownership of the problem and work on REAL solutions and stop crying in their pillows.

These “protesters” also have a problem with talking about tea bags:

President Obama wants to continue warrantless wiretaps

In a court brief, the Justice Department called for the dismissal of a lawsuit over the wiretaps that were not only illegal but may not have even gained any unusable intelligence. This is not change I was looking for when I voted for Obama. Pundit Keith Olbermann and others on the progressive side have called the President out on this stupid action to continue President Bush’s stupid policy. In fact it seems the Obama administration wants to go further. This is disappointing.

Glenn Greenwald on Salon.com noted:

But late Friday afternoon, the Obama DOJ filed the government’s first response to EFF’s lawsuit, the first of its kind to seek damages against government officials under FISA, the Wiretap Act and other statutes, arising out of Bush’s NSA program. But the Obama DOJ demanded dismissal of the entire lawsuit based on (1) its Bush-mimicking claim that the “state secrets” privilege bars any lawsuits against the Bush administration for illegal spying, and (2) a brand new “sovereign immunity” claim of breathtaking scope — never before advanced even by the Bush administration — that the Patriot Act bars any lawsuits of any kind for illegal government surveillance unless there is “willful disclosure” of the illegally intercepted communications. 

In other words, beyond even the outrageously broad “state secrets” privilege invented by the Bush administration and now embraced fully by the Obama administration, the Obama DOJ has now invented a brand new claim of government immunity, one which literally asserts that the U.S. Government is free to intercept all of your communications (calls, emails and the like) and — even if what they’re doing is blatantly illegal and they know it’s illegal — you are barred from suing them unless they “willfully disclose” to the public what they have learned.

New and worse secrecy and immunity claims from the Obama DOJ

Blogger TocqueDeville has a diary over on DailyKos with video of comments from Keith Olbermann on his show Countdown on Tuesday night. TocqueDeville also notes:

I never thought I would see it, but this move led Keith Olbermann to excoriate Obama on television. You may remember that, after Obama’s complete flip flop on FISA, Olbermann, who had previously likened the proposed FISA law immunizing the telecoms to “the bureaucrats of the Third Reich”, softened his tone dramatically to accommodate the then Democratic candidate for president.

There were no such accommodations tonight

Olbermann Smacks Down Obama’s Loss of Credibility

This is pretty much like seeing your favorite hero acting like an ass in public. It hurts a bit.

The Obama administration has some explaining to do on this issue but I have my doubts it ever will.

Republican Treason?

How come when people on the left side of the aisle even questioned Bush policies the Republicans and their pundit class complained it was treason – with full coverage from the media, yet when certain Republicans and their pundit class are calling for the overthrow of the government – the media class is very silent?

Who is really treasonous?

President Obama announces recovery agenda – Jindal and the GOP trapped in time worm hole

Tuesday night President Obama addressed a joint session of Congress to announce his agenda for the economic recovery and other issues that have long been put off like health care reform. Meanwhile, the GOP seem to be trapped in the 1990’s. They picked Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana to respond. He proved once again that political Republicans just plain hate America.

President Obama gave a great speech calling for fixing education, health care, and returning the US to leadership in research and development of technology.

My favorite part was:

In other words, we have lived through an era where too often, short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity; where we failed to look beyond the next payment, the next quarter, or the next election. A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future. Regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market. People bought homes they knew they couldn’t afford from banks and lenders who pushed those bad loans anyway. And all the while, critical debates and difficult decisions were put off for some other time on some other day.

Well that day of reckoning has arrived, and the time to take charge of our future is here.

Remarks of President Barack Obama – As Prepared for Delivery 

and this part:

For history tells a different story. History reminds us that at every moment of economic upheaval and transformation, this nation has responded with bold action and big ideas. In the midst of civil war, we laid railroad tracks from one coast to another that spurred commerce and industry. From the turmoil of the Industrial Revolution came a system of public high schools that prepared our citizens for a new age. In the wake of war and depression, the GI Bill sent a generation to college and created the largest middle-class in history. And a twilight struggle for freedom led to a nation of highways, an American on the moon, and an explosion of technology that still shapes our world.

In each case, government didn’t supplant private enterprise; it catalyzed private enterprise. It created the conditions for thousands of entrepreneurs and new businesses to adapt and to thrive. 

and finally:

But whatever the training may be, every American will need to get more than a high school diploma. And dropping out of high school is no longer an option. It’s not just quitting on yourself, it’s quitting on your country – and this country needs and values the talents of every American.

Of course after the speech, the Republicans decided to respond. Unfortunately they picked Governor Bobby Jindal to read the usual talking points that pretty much says “government is the problem”. I guess it wouldn’t be so bad if it his remarks didn’t include outright lies.

But Democratic leaders in Congress rejected this approach. Instead of trusting us to make wise decisions with our own money, they passed the largest government spending bill in history – with a price tag of more than $1 trillion with interest. While some of the projects in the bill make sense, their legislation is larded with wasteful spending. It includes $300 million to buy new cars for the government, $8 billion for high-speed rail projects, such as a ‘magnetic levitation’ line from Las Vegas to Disneyland, and $140 million for something called ‘volcano monitoring.’ Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, DC.

Governor Bobby Jindal’s Republican Address

Well there is no specific plan for a train from Las Vegas to Disneyland. Why wouldn’t buying new cars for the government create jobs? Those cars won’t just appear. They have to built by someone right? It is also ironic that Jindal would criticize a program to monitor volcanoes. Wouldn’t it be good to try to know ahead of time if one was about to erupt. That’s like complaining about the money spent for weather radars used to track Hurricanes.

All Jindal had was “tax cuts, tax cuts, more tax cuts and drill baby drill”. YAWN! That was the same platform that helped them win the White House in 2008…. oh yes that’s right they didn’t win. I also loved Jindal complaining about the $1 trillion deficit while ignoring that the GOP helped President Bush squander our surplus from the Clinton years and spend more than that on an unnecessary war in Iraq.

As David Brooks noted during the speech coverage on PBS:

JIM LEHRER: Now that, of course, was Gov. Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana, making the Republican response. David, how well do you think he did?

DAVID BROOKS: Uh, not so well. You know, I think Bobby Jindal is a very promising politician, and I oppose the stimulus because I thought it was poorly drafted. But to come up at this moment in history with a stale “government is the problem,” “we can’t trust the federal government” – it’s just a disaster for the Republican Party. The country is in a panic right now. They may not like the way the Democrats have passed the stimulus bill, but that idea that we’re just gonna – that government is going to have no role, the federal government has no role in this, that – In a moment when only the federal government is actually big enough to do stuff, to just ignore all that and just say “government is the problem, corruption, earmarks, wasteful spending,” it’s just a form of nihilism. It’s just not where the country is, it’s not where the future of the country is. There’s an intra-Republican debate. Some people say the Republican Party lost its way because they got too moderate. Some people say they got too weird or too conservative. He thinks they got too moderate, and so he’s making that case. I think it’s insane, and I just think it’s a disaster for the party. I just think it’s unfortunate right now.

No wonder no current Republican in Congress wanted to give the response.

What is the deal with attacking Rush Limbaugh?

In the past couple of weeks or so I have noticed an up tick in attacks on comedian Rush Limbaugh, especially coming from the White House and Democratic associated groups. I just don’t get it.

Rush is the voice of the Republicans? When has he not been? Did Democrats wake up one day, click on their radio, and say “What the fuc*???? Who is this person?”

But then again I don’t care. Democrats need a different plan.

Maybe it’s pay back for the attacks on the group Move On during their ad controversy in 2007. Or maybe the storm caused by the misuse of comments by General Wesley Clark about John McCain. It could even be a counter to the Swift boating of John Kerry in 2004.

It gets a lot of press because the villagers are looking for ways to give more press coverage to the GOP plus they have thousands of hours to fill on their cable channels and talk radio shows and not enough white young women go missing to keep fill that time. Besides Shark Week is in July.

Rush lies. The guy cherry picks his call ins. He is a bigot. He called Obama and Hillary pretty much every name in the book without losing his job. Probably 90% of his listeners are sheep and will never be reasoned with and they agree with all he says. Rush loves the attention and press coverage because he loves to play the victim. There is nothing new about Rush.

Using the power of the White House and the Democrats to attack the windbag is really like shooting fish in a barrel. And it has the same effect like sending another “strongly worded letter” from the Congress that we often saw during the final years of W’s term instead of Congress growing a pair and exerting some legislative power than comes from being in the majority.

The fact remains that the public voted and the GOP has nothing to offer. Rush has nothing to offer but cries of victim hood.

We have some serious issues to take care of and right now Rush and the GOP are irrelevant. They are a waste of time.

Here is an agenda I would like to see:

1. Ignore Rush Limbaugh – turn off the radio or enforce the Fairness Doctrine and a return to owner responsibility to the local community to provide a wide range of voices. Both items are still in the FCC rules.

2. Smack the GOP upside the head – have the Dem leadership explain “we gave them a chance and now we WILL do it our way…” Every time a Dem gets on a Sunday or Cable talk show and asked why they haven’t been “bi-partisan” they have to say “we gave them a chance and they refused to go along. If they want to participate our door is open but we won’t ask them any more because we don’t have to…” They need to say this EVERY FRICKING TIME when a microphone is shoved in their face. That’s how you frame a discussion.

3. If one of those Sunday or cable shows keep giving all the air time to the GOP refuse to accept an invite to one program as an example. Then hold a press conference outside the studio of that program and point out how one sided the talk shows are considering the reality outside the DC beltway.

4. Replace Senator Harry Reid with someone who will act like a majority leader in the Senate of the party with the majority. Maybe Reid just has a lot of lube left over from 2008?

I know it is hard to adapt to a new power structure but we need the Dems to learn fast and get on the stick or they will lose the chance the 2008 elections gave them.